Alan Ferrency writes about things.

Category: dba

Another year, another Fall-In convention. The more conventions I go to, the less new and different I have to say about them, so I’m going to go over some of the “big picture” items that I usually ignore, and only briefly cover the events themselves.

Walter White helps me with myconvention registration issue.

Gaming conventions are great fun, and they’re a wonderful way to get a big dose of gaming in over the course of the weekend. I learn more in a weekend at the convention than the entire time between conventions. My room for Cold Wars 2014 is already reserved, and I should probably go book for Fall-In as well.

As usual in recent years, I played nothing but DBx games: DBA and HotT. Fall-In is the smallest of the HMGS-East conventions, but there are enough players and GMs to field a full schedule of DBA and HotT games, from Thursday evening to Sunday morning with minimal breaks. All the DBA games were run using 2.2+. Nobody plays 2.2 anymore, and 3.0 isn’t released yet.

Ancient and Medieval wargaming is in a bit of a funk at the conventions these days. Although we have enough players to fill DBA tournaments, there is very little support in the vendor hall. The space where Wargames Minis used to be is still a huge hole in the back of the hall, and many other vendors seem not to bring their 15mm ancient and medieval figures in recent years.

If you’re interested in buying painted armies, there seems to be a big selection of DBA armies in the flea market; so there’s that, at least.

Luckily, Gale Force 9 have their bulk MDF bases back in stock, hopefully permanently. I stocked up on 25mm scale HotT bases on Friday before they ran out.

As I paint more armies, each army I paint becomes less and less useful to my overall collection. When I had 2 armies, painting a third was a huge benefit: on average it would see use 1/3 of the time. Now that I have over 30 armies, each new army I paint provides only a minuscule benefit over the ones I have. I play DBA so infrequently outside of conventions that the only way I can guarantee I’ll play an army is if I paint it for a specific themed event.

With that in mind, I built 3 armies in preparation for Fall-In 2013. I painted Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid for BBDBA, but didn’t end up using it. The Two Davids campaign event always provides a good motivation to paint a new army, so I painted Georgians. There wasn’t any other event at the same time as the 25mm DBA event, so I rebased a 25mm Early Polish army, though I didn’t paint the figures.

Mark Bumala is annoyed that Rich forgot the terrain mats.

Every convention, The Stooges from Pittsburgh run a Prologue event: an element-themed tournament on Thursday night. This time around the theme was “Long Pointy Things.” Eligible armies required at least 4 elements of Pike. These aren’t historical formats, and don’t tend to produce historical matchups. They often result in fairly balanced army matchups, but some metagamers try to turn it into an “armies that beat the element theme” event.

After winning 3 rounds undefeated, John Manning’s nearly naked Sumerians carried their Long Pointy double entendres to victory. I brought Seleucids. Although I tend to consider Alexander and his Successors as the main source of DBA Pike armies, I didn’t face any other Classical pikes. John Manning beat me with his Sumerians; I beat Mark Bumala’s Low Countries; and Roland Fricke beat me 5-3G in a very close battle with his Low Countries army.

I really like the later Sumerian army, but it’s only because their heavy chariots are donkey-pulled 4-wheel carts. At this point, the army composition is so similar to a Successor army that I just can’t justify painting the army without a themed event to play it in.

They did that? Their C-in-C hanging out on our leftflank should be easy to pick off…

The first Bookend event is Big Battle Doubles, held all day on Friday. Typically this event is run in two separate player pools, using either round-robin or swiss pair matchups in each group depending on the player count. After three preliminary rounds, the winners of each pool are supposed to play a final to determine the overall winner.

In recent conventions they’ve been using a historical theme, and this time around it was chariot-era biblical armies.

Team Two Davids won their pool as they usually do. Spencer Ginder and his wife, team Comedy and Tragedy, won the other pool. Since both teams live in the DC area, they decided to finish the final outside the convention. I haven’t heard the final results yet.

Team Comedy and Tragedy: Christine and Spencer Ginder

I partnered with Jack Sheriff, making him the second player I’ve partnered with more than once. We formed The Team With No Name, despite Dave Schlanger’s attempt to retcon us into The Team Who Shall Not be Named. I’d be happy to join forces with him again; we both have the right combination of laid back but competitive.

We decided to take Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid with a Saitic Egyptian ally. I planned to paint a Sargonid army with an ally for BBDBA before I partnered with Jack, but he had the army so I didn’t need to finish painting it.

In the first round, we faced Mark Burton and John Svensson, whose team name I forget, and their Lydian army. They defended and tried a bold, daring deployment that put most of their forces on our weaker right flank, but exposed their commander in chief on the end of their line. Truthfully, they put up a good fight and lasted several turns longer than I anticipated; but they lost in the end. We won 78-22.

In the second round, we faced team Comedy and Tragedy and their New Kingdom Egyptians. We lost 2-98.

Versus The Stooges. Before: Deployment.

We were determined to take our lessons learned into the third round, where we also faced New Kingdom Egyptians with the same composition. This time, they were piloted by the Stooges: Larry Chaban and “Diceman” Rich Baier from Pittsburgh. I came all this way to fight you?

Jack Sheriff is known as “the butcher,” and in this game we all helped him earn his title. In the end we lost 41-59, but it was one of the closest BBDBA matches I’ve seen. We were close to testing whether it was possible to gain more points as a loser than as a winner.

Versus The Stooges. After: Carnage.

The victory conditions for BBDBA say that you win if you have broken the enemy’s C-in-C command, or have killed more than half the enemy’s elements and also have more elements killed than they do. Big Battles uses a triple army, 36 elements, so half the elements are 18.

Near the end of this game, we were tied 17 elements to 17. They broke one of our commands early on, but we broke two of theirs shortly after. It was their turn, which meant that it was their turn for their elements to flee off the board, but also their turn to attack us and kill more elements. Unfortunately they were able to kill 18 elements before we could catch up, securing their victory. They won 19G-17G/CinC: a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

After this battle of epic proportions, the four of us decided to go to dinner rather than participate in the Friday evening event. On Roland’s advice, we drove a few miles away to a “Mexican” restaurant. This turned out to be a high quality Latin-American restaurant that was an absolutely amazing find for Lancaster, PA: El Serrano. After the loss of the Thai restaurant, and Tony Wang’s going down hill, it was great to find another place to eat good food. I had the Lomito and two excellent Margaritas, and didn’t regret missing a DBA event for the experience.

Pyramid event, final round.

On Saturday, I ran a Pyramid event. In this format, the loser of the each round joins forces with the winner in a multi-army battle in the next round. The 8-player pyramid results in 3 rounds culminating in an 8 player 4-on-4 battle.

This time around, I chose an Alexandrian Successor theme. In the final round, Larry Chaban as C-in-C of the Athenian Empire defeated Dan Loych, C-in-C of the Ptolemaic Empire, to secure Greek dominance over their Macedonian underlings.

A new target! I mean, Otto.

Saturday afternoon, there was only one event: a 25mm book II/III tournament. I usually don’t play 25mm, but 2.2+ normalized the rules across 15mm and 25mm, so I decided to take an army rather than do nothing. I could have taken my Early Spartans, but a wall of spears with a single Psiloi is fairly boring. I decided to rebase some painted Medieval figures I had into an Early Polish army, instead.

In the first round, I beat John Svensson’s Normans 4-0. Next I faced Jeff Franz and his Skythians; he didn’t roll enough 6’s for PIPs, so I beat him 3G-1. Finally, I faced John Manning’s Hsia-Hsia and won 4-2 to end in an undefeated victory. And so, I qualified for the NICT again even though I am unable to attend Historicon.

Saturday Night is the other Bookend event: the Two Davids Campaign Theme. This convention, the theme was God Wills It!, a Crusader theme. I played the Georgians, alone in the corner as usual. I’m not very good at parties.

I never took a vassal, but I won 2 rounds out of 5 (“Beat up on kids” according to Larry), killed a general, and ended the game independent, netting me 7 points and a solid middle-of-the-pack position.

Sunday Morning, instead of going to Perkins for their extreme bowel cleansing service, I decided to play the Hordes of the Things open. I brought Professor Hans’ Metal Minions. I won one round and lost 2. Scott Kastler’s magician army was a very interesting opponent.

It was another great convention, and I look forward to Cold Wars in March. In the mean time I have at least 3 DBA armies to paint, and I plan to field a new HotT army for the Sunday open as well.

The primary factor for me choosing this army was that the slot was still available in the campaign. However, I also had a number of the figures on hand, as leftovers from other projects. I chose the rest of the figures based on what Jack Sheriff used in his Georgian army.

Unlike Jack’s figures, most of mine are stock, unmodified Essex miniatures. The exceptions are four Light Horse models, which were Bulgar archers. They had large toggles on the front of their coats, which I removed to make them look almost identical to the Essex Kipchak/Cuman figures.

III/70b: 4x2LH. Essex Miniatures.

III/70b: 2x4Sp. Essex Miniatures.

The Knights are a mix of Essex Georgian knights and other similar knights. The general and his supporting figures are a generic Eastern European command set.

I had a hard time finding any definitive information on colors and shield patterns for this army. I would not use this army as an example of what Georgians are supposed to look like. I was inspired by a few other painted Georgian armies online, and pictures of

As usual, these are painted primarily with Vallejo acrylics. I use a combination of painted highlights and several colors of ink washes for shading. Shields are hand painted.

I’ve gotten a lot of heckling from my friends, but the explanation is simple: at Fall-In 2013, there is nothing else going on during the 25mm tournament, and I’m not going to use up my whole Saturday without playing anything before the campaign event. If I did that, I’d only go buy things.

So, I built a 25mm army from figures I had on hand. I didn’t paint this army, I bought the figures already painted. I only touched them up, applied some ink, and based them. They’re brighter than they’d be if I painted them, but I didn’t have to put the effort in, which is fine with me. I’ll save my limited 25mm painting for HotT armies.

In preparation for the Assyrian campaign event at Fall-In 2012, JM and I ordered Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid armies from Magister Militum. JM planned to paint his for the campaign event, and I’d paint mine so we could build a BBDBA army out of them. Yeah, that was a year ago.

DBA army I/51: Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid; Magister Militum figures

Assyrian Chariots; Magister Militum miniatures.

As with many plans, this one failed to survive contact with the enemy. JM didn’t go to Fall-In, and I didn’t have an occasion to paint the Assyrians for BBDBA until this year. I planned to go to Fall-In 2013 with Mike Kaizar (there’s that “plan” thing again), and wanted to play Assyrians in Big Battles. I got as far as painting this army in September before Mike cancelled, and I found another Big Battle partner who already has Assyrians painted.

Assyrian Spearmen; Magister Militum miniatures.

I didn’t do much research for color selections with this army. Essentially, I had a vague memory of seeing Assyrians in light blue-grey and red, and did that. The army painted up fairly quickly due to the few number of colors used, and I’m happy with the way they turned out.

Biblical armies are my “dump stat,” so I don’t usually spend much time on them despite tending to enjoy the fast pace of Biblical battles. Luckily it’s often fairly easy to get a good look for them since they typically have simple clothing.

Assyrian Spearmen; Magister Militum miniatures.

I like the Magister Militum figures. I believe these were originally Chariot miniatures before Magister Militum purchased the line. They’re sculpted well, and have a “toy soldier” feel, with very limited and static poses. The overall effect is good, though it has a bit of a “retro” feel compared to more modern figures.

The figures they provided for the Horde elements are interesting. They sent an even mix of archers and lightly armed spearmen. I decided to base them up similarly to Pavisers, since it doesn’t make much sense to put the spearmen behind the bows.

JM decided not to go to Cold Wars this year, but luckily Mike Kaizar did. It’s always more fun to go to a convention with a friend, even when there are more friends waiting for you when you get there. He drove from Columbus to Pittsburgh, and we left late enough that we got to Lancaster at 8 or 9pm.

BBDBA Doubles

First thing on Friday Morning, as usual, was BBDBA Doubles. This was the first time Mike and I have partnered for BBDBA, and it went quite well overall. I hope Mike keeps coming out to more conventions in the future; I’d happily partner with him again.

This was the first BBDBA event I’ve played in that had a historical theme: Medieval Europe. We took my recently finished Early Hungarian army. I filled out the third army by building a morph army out of my Germans, Early Russians, and otherrandom figures. Many of the figures were identical except for the paint job, so they matched well.

I’ve wanted this army for a long time, and was very interested to try it in BBDBA. For the Ax/Bw option, I would ordinarily have chosen all Auxilia. However, since this was BBDBA with a Medieval Europe theme, I expected to see relatively little bad going (except when playing against The Davids), and a substantial number of bows in our enemies’ armies. I decided to take 3x3Ax, 3x3Bw. In retrospect, I’m not sure if that was the best choice or not. 3 bows wasn’t as many as bow-heavy armies had, so it may have been better to take all bows or all auxilia.

Early Hungarians vs. Two Davids playing Feudal English with Welsh ally.

In the first round, we faced Two Davids: David Kuijt and David Schlanger. They were playing Feudal English with a Welsh ally. We ended up as the attackers, and as I expected, we saw a good amount of terrain.

In this game, our command structure used three combined arms commands, with elements shifted around to get good break points and PIP management.

High PIP, 13 el, BP 5: 2xKn(Gen), 2xCv, 5xLH, 3xSp, 1xPs.

Mid PIP, 13 el, BP 5: 2xKn(CinC), 1xCv, 3xLH, 3xSp, 3xAx, 1xPs.

Low PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 2xKn(Gen), 1xLH, 3xSp, 3xBw, 1xPs.

The Davids had one large English command and one tiny one: their C-in-C had 3xKn, 1xCv, and 4xHd, which they taped in place around their camp. This meant that they could attack with their C-in-C command’s mounted, and they’d have to lose 3/4 of its elements in order to break. It made it easy for them to combine two or 3 commands against one of ours, and its small size made it hard to reach and even harder to gang up on.

Our commands worked quite well, but unfortunately our attack didn’t succeed quickly enough to win. It ended up fairly close: we lost 25-75. It was a good matchup and a fun game; a great way to start the convention.

Early Hungarians vs. Comedy and Tragedy playing Low Countries.

In the second game, we faced Comedy and Tragedy: Spencer and Christina Ginder. They were playing Low Countries: a pike army (with knights). Their forces were less mobile than ours, so they had terrain on the board again. That was satisfying, but also made me question whether this army composition for Hungarians actually wants very much terrain.

In deciding what command structure to use here, I considered how Spencer might use his pikes. Many players combine their pikes into a single huge block, give it the low PIP die, and sit it on defense. Some build a single large pike block but spread it across two commands so they can attack with it. Others maintain several separate combined arms commands.

Large blocks of pike are hard to break but easy to avoid, and they’re easier to use effectively. Combined arms is more flexible, but more difficult to use and easier to break by killing things other than the pike. We decided to build a very mobile force that would be able to quickly and easily outflank a large block of pike, if they brought one to the field. Our main force would follow up to pin their line in place, preventing them from effectively turning to face our flank attack. Our approximate command breakdown:

High PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 3xCv (Gen), 7xLH.

Medium PIP, 16 el, BP 6: 4xKn (CinC), 1xLH, 6xSp, 2xPs, 3xAx.

Low PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 3xSp (Gen), 3xBw, 1xPs, 2xKn, 1xLH.

It turned out the Ginders decided to use multiple combined arms commands, but we maintained our plan: a fast flank attack where we intended to win, and a slower frontal press where we hoped not to lose. They deployed with a gap in their line for flexibility, but unfortunately couldn’t use their third command to both fill the gap and protect their flank effectively. This stretched their command radius to its maximum. Their combined arms commands had pike and knights interleaved, making it difficult to get optimal local matchups.

Our left flank attack arrived quickly, but took a long time to become effective. We tied up a larger number of the enemy’s troops with my smaller mobile command, but unfortunately our high PIP die was committed to that use alone. In the mean time, we started winning more quickly elsewhere. In the end, the battle didn’t go as we had planned, but we did win 92-8, so I have no complaints.

The lesson we learned here is that you really don’t need a very large flanking force to be effective, if you can truly get around the enemy’s flank; but you do need a lot of time if you’re using resilient weak forces (LH) versus a stronger enemy who can’t kill you (Pk). The terrain made it difficult to support our flank attack effectively, since we didn’t have any bad going troops in the attacking command.

Early Hungarians vs. Doug Austin’s Condotta with Swiss ally.

The third game was the first time we rolled low enough to defend and place terrain. Early Hungarians are Steppe, not arable, so we placed a bunch of small bits of rough and a few hills.

Our command split was the same as in the first game. We placed our Mid and Low PIP commands first, with a gap between them so we could wheel them both to the right or left depending on our needs. Unfortunately, our terrain was offset to the left a bit farther than we’d prefer, leaving little space to deploy our third command on that side. This made our third deployment possibly a bit too obvious.

Doug deployed to overlap our line on both ends, as expected; and we deployed our third command on our right flank, also as expected. This left us with a lot of room to outflank him on our right, but he overlapped us on our left.

Doug quickly second-guessed his deployment, and decided he needed more troops on his left (our right) flank. He started spending PIPs to redeploy knights from his right to his left behind his line, as he advanced slowly and we tried to press on as quickly as possible.

We had the early game advantage due to the PIPs he was spending on redeployment and having his troops out of command. I broke his command on our right flank, but unfortunately I was too aggressive with my CinC command, and ended up suffering losses where I should have just been holding the line and waiting for my right flank to keep winning. We started losing elements on our left flank, and eventually lost enough elements in our CinC for it to break. It was a good game, but we lost 16-84.

My first goal for BBDBA was to win a game, and I accomplished that with JM several conventions ago. After that game, my second goal was to finish with at least 100 points. We achieved that in this tournament, after a strong win and two losses that actually gave us points. BBDBA Doubles is one of the highlights of every convention, now that I’m competent enough to feel like I have a chance of succeeding in most of the games.

Quad Themes

Friday night was Roland Fricke’s Quad Themes event. There were 4 rounds, each played with a different army from a different historical theme. At this point I was fairly fried, so I’ll just give a rundown of the results.

In round 1, I played Early Egyptians (I/2a) and beat Mark Pozniak’s Nubians, 6-5. Next, I played Later Achaemenid Persians, and beat Dick Pagano’s Macedonian Successors 4-1. In the third round, Rich “Diceman” Baier’s Later Imperial Romans (East) beat my Ancient Brits 4-2. I got to play Mike Kaizar in the last round, but it was a poor matchup for him: my knight-heavy Feudal Spanish faced his blade and raider Vikings. He won anyway, with a 1g-0 victory in one of the first rounds of combat.

Alexander the Great Theme

On Saturday morning, we were forced to get up way too early, for Mark Pozniak’s 8am event: an Alexander the Great theme. I brought Later Achaemenid Persians, and lost all my games. I didn’t write down my opponents’ armies, unfortunately. Mike Guth beat me 2C-0. Bill Fisher beat me 4-2. Kristy Faux beat me 4-3.

Unification War: Rise of the Son of Heaven

On Saturday afternoon, I ran a Pyramid format event with a Warring States Chinese theme. We used Limited Attrition rules as described on the Buttocks of Death Wiki.

Warring States Pyramid, final round of 4-on-4.

We had two new, young DBA players: Otto, Dave Schlanger’s son, and his friend BJ. They had a lot of fun, and I expect to see them playing DBA at more events in the future.

The Commanders in Chief in the final round were Otto leading his Chu empire against David Kuijt’s Qin empire.

These 4-on-4 games usually end up being more like several 1-on-1 games next to each other, rather than having as much interaction between commands as you have in BBDBA, but they are still quite fun; and that’s the real point in the end anyway. Everyone seemed to enjoy the Pyramid format, and the limited attrition rules worked very well, as they did at last year’s Cold Wars. I think I prefer running Pyramid events rather than Matched Pairs. I like having fixed signups and a tighter historical theme, and it’s easier to handle the matchups when the pyramid is constructed before the event starts.

Two Davids Campaign: Recovering Byzantium

The real reason I had to paint Early Hungarians before this convention was the Two Davids campaign event: Recovering Byzantium. The campaign was centered around Byzantine states in 1230AD, and Hungary was on the outskirts.

In the first round, John Manning attacked me with his Byzantine army, and I lost 3-4. Not a great start, but that’s okay. In the second round, Jack Sheriff’s Syrians attacked me and I beat them. Next, I attacked Mark Burton and failed to capture a vassal.

In the final round, I had a high number, and I was surprised to be allowed to attack someone again. When my number came up there were 4 of us left. I attacked Dave Schlanger, and beat him; acquiring a vassal.

After the fourth round there was a bit of an incident… I won’t go over the details, but you’ll never fail to remember it if you were there. It pretty much put an end to peoples’ enthusiasm for a fifth round.

I still enjoy the campaign events. I think overall, I enjoy events with a very strict army list best, because they provide me with the most motivation to paint more interesting armies.

Hordes of the Things Open

Hordes of the Things: Fire vs. Ice played by BJ.

On Sunday morning, Mike met his parents for breakfast and I played Hordes of the Things. I brought my Die in a Fire army.

In the final round, my fire elementals faced Rick Wynn’s Wild Hunt of Faerie (Oberon, Titania Elves) army. Rick’s army was beautiful, built mostly out of Games Workshop plastics. He did a wonderful job of building an exactly 24 point army with a very specific theme.

After a bit of posturing, our magicians made it into range of each other. I decided to try to ensorcel his general with mine on the first turn I had a chance, because he had two magicians and could get a better shot against me if I waited. This turned out to be a tied roll, the only result that didn’t end up with one of us losing instantly.

In the next round Oberon returned the favor, with Titania’s help, instead of ensorcelling with Titania and having Oberon help. Despite his better combat factors, I rolled high enough to beat him and pull the instant win: 4g-0.

This was the first time I had used a Dragon in HOTT. I have mixed opinions about it at this point; it’s powerful and looks cool, but it’s also easy to lose and you don’t get any overlap support from friendly elements. I think the key might be to use it with fliers who can provide flank and rear support more easily.

It turns out that after my two wins and favorable loss, I ended up tied for first place with BJ. Since he beat me, he won the event overall. Congratulations, and I hope to see you back for more games!

It was another great convention, and I’m glad I went. I won’t be making it to Historicon, but I look forward to more great conventions in the future.

Soon after I started playing DBA again in about 2009, I decided that I wanted an Early Hungarian (III/67b) army. It’s been a long journey since then, but finally my quest is complete! I finished a double army just before Cold Wars.

Double DBA army III/67b; mixed manufacturers.

Early Hungarian knights by Essex and Black Hat (Gladiator).

I was attracted to this army for several reasons. I am 1/4 Hungarian, and identify most closely with that part of my heritage. The composition of the army itself seems almost perfect for my tastes: 2x3Kn, 1x3Cv, 3x2LH, 3xSp, 2x3Ax or 3Bw, 1x2Ps. It’s one of the few Medieval combined arms armies I’ve seen with more than one Auxilia. It also fits well with other armies I have from the same period: German, Leidang, Polish, Russian, and Mongol Conquest… even though I bought most of those armies only because they were good enemies of the Hungarians I didn’t have yet.

Cuman and Hungarian Light Horse by Black Hat (Gladiator)

My first attempt at building this army was purchasing a “not for the squeamish general” army pack from another gamer on the Fanaticus forums. It had the proper composition, but as I should have expected, I didn’t like the figure selection very much. It was mixed manufacturers, but chosen based on whatever he had lying around and not based on what he thought the army should look like. After not painting it for quite some time, I donated it to Mike Kaizar, who is still working on it.

Hungarian spearmen by Black Hat (Gladiator).

My second attempt came when Wargames Minis had a clearance sale on their Essex Miniatures packs. After long research discovered no good solution for Early Hungarians, I settled on buying a bunch of Essex later Hungarian figures that might work. They were so cheap, I bought two armies worth! But when it came time to actually paint them… I hated them. Closer inspection showed me that they were far too late for any part of the Early Hungarian list.

Early Hungarian bowmen by Black Hat (Gladiator)

By this time it was late 2012, and I needed this army for Cold Wars 2013. After talking to David Kuijt, I settled on the figures shown here. The General stands and a few of the other knights are Essex figures from my previous order. The remaining knights, light horse, spears, bows, auxilia and psiloi are all Black Hat figures from their Gladiator range. The Cavalry are a mix of Essex figures, Black Hat, and a few whose manufacturer I do not know but I happened to have on hand.

Early Hungarian cavalry by Black Hat, Essex, and others (unknown).

The Black Hat figures are not specifically sold as Hungarians, other than the knights with round helms. Many of them are from their general Feudal range, and some are from slightly inappropriate areas, but look good enough that I wanted to paint more of them.

Early Hungarian Psiloi by Black Hat (Gladiator).

I knew the primary heraldry I wanted to use was red and white, but I didn’t want another red and white army since it’s the most common color combination I have. David told me that repeated heraldry wouldn’t be common in this period, but I am also not a fan of a widely varied, garish palette. I decided to use a lot more yellow and yellow browns, and rounded out the palette with green. It’s definitely not red and white army I feared it would be.

Hungarian Auxilia by Black Hat (Gladiator).

I’m not sure if I prefer the green and the brighter reds I used here, but otherwise I’m quite happy with the color scheme. For the white on the shields, I used an “extremely off-white.” It’s closer to beige than white, but in contrast with the surrounding colors it’s bright enough, and doesn’t add too much contrast. Looking at the shields, I’m reminded of Hoplite shield patterns more than garish Medieval heraldry.

I’m very happy with the way this army turned out. After playing it in BBDBA and the campaign at Cold Wars, I also enjoy the way the army plays.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all those Later Hungarian figures, since that army has so few spears compared to this one.

This year’s Battle at the Crossroads was on February 22nd. There were only 6 players for DBA, so instead of running a pyramid event, we ran a normal 3-round tournament, and ended with a 3-on-3 game “for fun” with the top two players as C-in-C of each side. The games were played with DBA using the 2.2+ extensions, and I had a new set of MU sticks made for the occasion.

3-on-3 Battle at the Crossroads; John Loy and Larry Chaban.

I won my first two games, against Daryl and then John Loy. In the last round of standard play, Larry finally broke his 2-year losing streak against me, and beat me. I’m officially no longer his nemesis. Sooner or later he’s going to have to find JM and beat him, since apparently Larry has never beaten him…

For the final 3-on-3 game, Larry and I were commanders-in-chief. My allies were the two players Larry beat: Mike Kaizar and Bob. Larry commanded John Loy and Daryl.

Everything was going well overall, but then Mike’s command broke on our right flank. Soon after that, Daryl’s command broke opposite Mike. Unfortunately, Bob broke before we could break the enemy, and it was all downhill from there.

The army selection was fun this year, with a biblical theme. The games were over quickly due to the low combat factors, which allowed us to fit in 3 single games and the triple game, and still get home at a reasonable hour.

This was a good event, but we need more players! What happened to the days of bringing 4 or more players from Pittsburgh?

Last weekend was Fall In! in Lancaster, PA. I drove out with Rich and Larry as usual, but unfortunately JM couldn’t attend this time.

Fall In 2012: Maureen Reddington-Wilde playing Gauls in the Warbandia event.

This was an unusual convention for me. For the entire weekend, I didn’t use any army that fought after 50AD, but my chosen army dates were even earlier: no later than about 250BC.

Thursday

Thursday night, Larry ran Warbandia. Eligible armies need at least 6 warbands, and I didn’t have many choices. I brought my Celtiberians, since I painted them fairly recently. In the first game, I beat Maureen Reddington-Wilde and her Gauls 4-0. The second game against Mike Guth’s Visigoths was worthy of an epic poem, but unfortunately I’m no poet, so all it gets is a compound sentence. In one turn both of our generals were killed, tying the game at 3g-3g; but unfortunately it was Mike’s turn next, and he was able to kill one of my elements without me killing any of his, so he won 4g-3g. In the final round, I lost to Paul Georgian and his gauls, 0-4g.

Friday

The Stooges telling us we did it wrong.

Friday was BBDBA doubles. Since JM wasn’t around, I found an alternate partner: Chris Brantley. We played triple Hittites, the later list with heavy chariots instead of all light chariots.

Our first matchup was against the Stooges and their Patrician Romans (East). We were doing okay for a while, but then we started rolling combat dice. Chris’s command lost 3 chariots in one bound, punching a big hole in the center of our line. We were able to regain some ground, but not enough; we lost 6-94 after our C-in-C command broke. We made a few mistakes in the center, such as missing an opportunity to close the door on the enemy’s general.

Bill Brown and Will Michael run forward with their pikes.

In the second round, we faced Will Michael and Bill Brown with their Scots Common army. This was the most interesting Pike army I’ve ever faced, mainly because they decided to split their pike into each command and use it on the attack rather than holding it back and using it as a huge static defense. They deployed away from their camp, which pulled us into their trap. We deployed heavily in front of their camp, to encourage them to deploy their third command there to defend it. Unfortunately, our C-in-C wasn’t on that side of the board, so they smartly decided to give up their camp, and concentrate all their forces on our C-in-C. We won their camp, but we weren’t fast enough to kill 4 more elements in their C-in-C command before they broke ours and won the game. It ended 14-86 in their favor.

Unfortunately, for the Nth time in a row there were 9 teams for BBDBA, which is just the completely wrong number to have. In the third round we got a bye, which just sucks. I’m there to play, not to win a free 80 points without playing a game. I had a good time playing in the other two games, and I’m not sorry we lost.

In the evening, Chris Brantley ran Ars Militaria: a Book II event using double blind deployment. This ended up being very interesting, but it’s not how I’d prefer to play DBA every time.

David Kuijt built stands to hold curtain-like screens across the center of the board. After placing terrain and choosing our board edges, the curtain was put into place and we each deployed our armies based on knowing only the terrain and not the enemy’s deployment.

I brought Later Achaemenid Persians. In the first round I lost to Dave Schlanger and his Early Gordyenes. In the second round I beat Alex Bostwick’s Seleucids despite his attempt to force-push the terrain when I wasn’t looking. In the last round, David Kuijt beat me with Greco-Bactrians.

The blind deployment worked fairly well without any cheesy moves taking place. Nobody had time to find any obvious ways to break things, and the armies were matched well enough that there weren’t any problems.

However, I do think the screens affected the metagame and deployment choices somewhat. Maneuver is more important if you aren’t sure where your enemy is going to be, which affects both army selection and deployment.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, I ran DBA Matched Pairs. As at Historicon, we only had 15mm armies show up, which was a good thing, because the 25mm boards weren’t available yet this time either. We had some inexperienced players joining in, so we took our time to teach them well and only got 3 rounds in before time ran out.

In the afternoon, I played in the Two Davids sci-fi event, 61 Cygni: Blood, Dirt, Plasma-bolts. This event use a ruleset inspired by HOTT, written by David Kuijt with the goal of implementing Mechwarrior/Battletech themed battles a bit better than HOTT manages. There were 8 players on a huge board, the map of Rio de Janeiro that they used for Monsterpocalypse HOTT at Historicon.

The main problem with using HOTT for large scale sci-fi battles is that the guns are huge, but the HOTT shooting ranges are tiny to nonexistent. David’s rules implement direct and indirect ranged fire at much more plausible ranges, while maintaining most of the feel and rules of HOTT under the surface. Overall, the rules worked fairly well; but I think they need a bit more polish to really handle the feel of Mech battles effectively.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this visually impressive event.

David Mitchell’s Skythians kicked butt.

On Saturday night was the Two Davids campaign event: Death To Assyrian Oppression! This event pitted a half dozen Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid armies against a gamut of historical enemies. I played Skythians.

My 5 rounds:

Dave Schlanger attacked, I lost and lost my general.

Rich Gause attacked, and I lost

Jack Sheriff attacked, and I lost; but I killed his general.

I attacked David Mitchell and his Skythians, and lost again.

Maureen Reddington-Wilde attacked with her Skythians, and I beat her.

I ended up with only 2 points, but at least it wasn’t negative! In other news, Alex Bostwick was taken over 6 times in 5 rounds (with one suck-up tile) and came in last place with -1.

Thanks to everyone for another great convention! I hope to see you at Cold Wars 2013.

I painted this Early Polish army to be an ally of Early Russians in BBDBA. Unfortunately, JM didn’t make it to Fall-In, so we haven’t had a chance to use it yet.

DBA army III/62b: Early Polish; Essex miniatures.

The figures are all Essex Miniatures except for the sword-wielding knights with crests, and the musician; those are Black Hat (Gladiator), I believe. This was not an army pack; JM chose all the Essex figures during the early part of the Wargames Miniatures Essex clearance sale.

Although there are a lot of wonderful designs there, I like to tie the look of my army together so it’s not too garish. I decided to divide the army into three houses, each with an element of knight, bow, and spear. The remaining elements used red highlights but otherwise didn’t use any specific heraldry

I had to make an attempt at the Polish national Dr. Seuss birds. Fo the others, I chose designs primarily for the way they looked, without any consideration for when they were used historically. I tried to choose designs different from designs I might use on my Serbian, Hungarian or other Eastern European armies. I left the red caparisons plain, but mirrored the triple rose heraldry on the blue caparisons.

This army painted up fairly quickly since it doesn’t have any optional elements. I’m not sure when I’ll use it. Lately, every army I paint up has been used less and less. I almost need to have a specific event to paint for, in order to ensure that every new army is used in at least 3 games.

On my family vacation in New Hampshire over Fourth of July week, I brought a painting project: DBA army II/39b, Ancient Spanish Celtiberians. Thanks for trading me this army, Jeff! I needed it for the Two Davids campaign theme at Historicon, for the Punic Wars theme.

Corvus Belli Celtiberians: 3Cv(gen), 2LH.

These are all Corvus Belli figures. The pack I got from Jeff Franz came with only round shields. I didn’t think this was appropriate, so I ordered a pack of oval Spanish shields. Unfortunately they didn’t arrive before I left town, so all of these figures were painted without shields while I was on vacation, and then the shields were added and painted after the fact.

Corvus Belli Celtiberians: 6x3Ax, or Raiders in the campaign.

Corvus Belli Celtiberians: 4x2Ps, 1 camp follower.

The figures are painted with simple flat colors, followed by a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone over the entire army. This is quick and effective, and when your army’s shields are its focal point, you don’t need much more anyway.

The shields were primed black and then their patterns were painted, preserving enough of the black primer to define lines between the shield segments. Also simple, but effective.

Unfortunately, during the campaign, the army was utterly slaughtered 4 games in a row. It was a fun army to play, but rolling 1’s doesn’t get you very far.